Friday, December 28, 2012

Before he adopted the cosmic surfboard, the herald of Galactus was known as The Silver Sledder!

As always, the Chades (Character Design) Challenge is open to anyone who wants to contribute. If you have a shiny sled design of your own, let me know and I'll post your art below. Otherwise, you can join in January 11th for...

Thursday, December 27, 2012

A new year means a new 'do for the blog! The four guidelines for a decent blog banner are 1) Make it up-lifting. 2) Make it colorful. 3) The title needs to be clear and legible, and 4) Avoid fart jokes. Like I said: they're not rules, they're just guidelines.

Thanks for continuing to stop by and leaving comments; I've got lots of mischief and mayhem in the works for 2013 and beyond, so stay tuned!

Tuesday, December 25, 2012

My step-sister Kelley is a TA for American River College, where she helps professors grade essays, and my step-brother (and fellow Munchanka) Marc is taking a Logic and Reasoning course where he writes essays. So, I thought it would be run to pick an arguable topic and write opposing essays to be graded and read aloud on Christmas morning. Our topic was Elf Labor Law; Marc was pro-elf unions, I was pro-Santa. Here are the resulting arguments:

UNIONS AND SANTA'S WORKSHOP

Santa
Claus is well-known for maintaining a workshop in the North Pole region in which
he produces toys for all the children of the world. It is also accepted as fact
that Santa maintains a large staff of elves to help produce the gifts required
to fulfill the wishes of boys and girls. The massive amount of toys that need
to be produced necessitates a strict production schedule. Copious demand will
spur production to greater speeds, and due to the difficulties that Elves could
potentially face they have formed a union. The following arguments willdefend the need of a union for the elves.

It is true that Santa is a
phenomenal employer, for he takes great care of his elvish employees. The elves
have full health coverage, and are given appropriate time off. In fact the
elves are completely satisfied with their treatment from Santa. The
purpose of the union as it stands now is to serve as a social event
organizational body. From this viewpoint it could be argued that the union is
useless and should be abolished. The argument here, however, is not what the
union can do or the elves today, but what it can do for them in the years to
come.

The world population today stands at
around seven billion individuals. If even a quarter of that population is children
then the North Pole workshop has to produce enough toys for one billion seven
hundred fifty million kids. The population of the world is expected to increase
at a near exponential rate. It is only a matter of time until the demand for
toys outstrips the ability of the elves to produce them. It is at this point
that the union will provide a layer of protection to the elves.

History has already seen the
consequences of unbridled demand for manufactured goods and the abuses that
employees suffered attempting to meet that demand. In America during the Gilded
Age, a period that lasted from roughly the early 1880’s to the mid 1890’s, the
nation experienced an industrial revolution. Entrepreneurs exercised absolute
authority in their pursuit to maximize profits at the detriment to their
workers. Employees suffered long hours and dangerous conditions, a situation
that was possible due to the lack of government oversight and weak employee
relationships with their employers. Everything was directed toward producing as
much as possible as fast as possible in order to maximize immediate profits.
The situation became so unbearable that the workers in Carnegie’s steel mill
went on universal strike. Carnegie hired Pinkertons to “break the line”, and in
the resulting chaos several workers were killed. In Santa’s workshop, the
motivation for profit is markedly reduced; however, the need to produce at
breakneck speeds to meet the demands of all the children could lead to
similarly dangerous work conditions. The elf union being in place already will
help to head off those potential dangers before they ever come to a head.

Unions creating a safer workplace
have a secondary effect of benefiting the environment. During the 1840s, in
England, a time known as the Industrial Revolution, pollution was absolutely
deplorable. Manchester England’s rivers and creeks were a thick black and green
morasses of filth. A low cloud of pollution hung over the city. With the advent
of collective bargaining sanctioned by the government, employees were able to
demand cleaner working conditions for their own health. The net effect saw a
reduction in pollution around the entire city. The issue of environment is of
particular concern to the Santa and the elves since the biosphere of the North
Pole is particularly sensitive to ecological changes. The union of the elves
prevents irresponsible waste disposal practices for the health of the workers.
Disposing of waste in a responsible manner reduces the environmental impact of
the North Pole workshop. This, in turn, will ensure that the delicate environment
stays in balance. If pollution were to run rampant at the north pole, the ice
cap would melt. If the ice cap were to melt, Santa would have to relocate his
workshop. This would impose enormous cost on the Jolly old man, so in effect
the existence of the union helps to mitigate potential future cost over runs,
despite the fact that a union costs more per hour of labor in the immediate
accounting reports.

The value of the elf union may seem
to be minimal currently, but the truth is that the union exists to prevent any
potential future abuses of the elves as production pressures increase to meet
demands. It also exists to provide for the health of the workers, a practice
which has a side effect of decreasing human and elf impact on the environment.
The labor union is an investment in the well being of the future of the elves
and the region of the North Pole. For those reasons the union is
invaluableand should continue to exist.

AN ELFLESS ACT

Elves are charming, whimsical creatures full of humor, craftsmanship, and good will toward all men. Or so they would have you believe. History tells us a different tale, painting the picture of an elitist pack of nomadic immortals: undying, yet eternally immature, bent on all matter of mischief and meddling in the lives of men. Everywhere you find them in literature, you find war, black magic, and death. Elves seek to unionize in the North Pole. They would have you believe this is a humanitarian effort and a move for social equality. In truth, organized elves will only serve to threaten Christmas and replace the Season of Giving with one of utter elf-centeredness.

The elves, or ylfe, as they were named by the Anglo Saxons who first encountered them in 10th century Northern Europe, have shifted between apathy and antagonism in their relations to mankind. In fact, before Santa came along, elves were real little shits. The rare documented occurrences of elves venturing from their secluded forest hovels were quite unpleasant experiences for all human parties involved. The German word for nightmare, Alptrauma, derives from the phrase “elf dream.” The Germans believed that elves would sit on the dreamer’s chest, using their black magic to induce nightmares and indigestion. Some call it mind rape. Other elf-related terms of Olde English include “elf-tangle,” referring to the knots elves love to tie into otherwise long, flowing locks, and “elf stroke,” a rather nasty business wherein a human suffers sudden paralysis due to an elf curse.

A unionized elf workforce would seem a noble pursuit if one could find any trace of nobility in elf history; but when we look for nobility in popular elven figures, what we find is a shock of sinister deeds. There is Rumpelstiltskin, a child abductor who demanded that children cry out his name during the horrendous acts that will go undescribed in this article. Not exactly the fort of fellow you’d want to see at a shopping mall with a child on his lap. There is also Queen Mab, who would plague ladies’ lips with “blisters” which we now know to be the origin of herpes. Just imagine how she’d stuff your stocking if left to her own devices. Finally we have Loki, who would have the men of his age call him “the god of mischief,” though he was no more than an elf, or alfr as the Nordes later called him. Hardly a replacement for Old Saint Nick.

Things get even worse when one considers elves in large numbers. Let us examine the great organizations of elf history. First, there are the Keebler elves, baking away in their unsanitary arboreal kitchens, creating subpar snack foods and contributing to the epidemic of childhood obesity. Hardly a legacy. There are also the Sindarin, led by the mighty Elrond. Fine craftsmen, and able warriors--that is, when they care to respond to their allies’ pleas for aid.. Elf warriors failed to lift a finger in the battle of Helm’s Deep, the siege on Minas Tirith, or the Scouring of the Shire. The dwarven warrior Gimli, son of Gloin, had it right, “Never trust an elf.” It should be noted that the goblins, orcs, and uruk hai that murdered the courageous defenders of Rohan and Gondor in said battles were closely related to the elves they loved to slaughter. Much like the domestic pig, which can go feral within months of escape into the wild (growing coarse hair, tusks, and severe aggression), the hair-conditioned elves can become blood-thirsty orcs under the wrong influences.

Any who still doubt the danger that empowered elves may pose ought look no further than the wicked Krampus, a creature reported in Alpine folklore, who visits the naughty children at the Yuletide Season and carries them off to his lair. Hooved and horned, one might believe the Krampus is closer related to the satyrs of Greek mythology than the sweet tinkering elves that we’ve come to know and love. But a look at line 114 of Beowulf shows elves flow from the same spring as every other fowl bit of cryptozoologic fauna in this world:

“For killing of Abel

the Eternal Lord had extracted a price:

Cain got no good from committing that murder

because the Almighty made him anathema

and out of the curse of his exile there sprang

ogres and elves and evil phantoms

and the giants too who strove with God

time and again until He gave them their reward."

Do elves work long hours? Yes. Are their working conditions perfect? They can probably be improved. But is the world ready for the elves to organize into unions? Certainly not! We ought to place our trust in the man who has earned it through year after year of proven results: Saint Nicholas. Yes, SAINT Nicholas, for he is a saint in word and deed. Only Santa had the vision to see the glimmer of potential in the dark souls of elves. After centuries of toil, Santa has forged a sterling reputation for North Pole workers that no elven group has enjoyed before. Santa has provided elves with career opportunities that simply wouldn’t be there for them in the modern era. He has brought commerce and industry to the North Pole, and he has put a comically small, festively painted tooling hammer in the hand of every able-bodied elf under the Aurora Borealis. Rather than asking what Santa can do for elves, we ought to ask what elves can continue doing for the greater good. The greatest gift we can give the tiny folk this year is the gift of inspiring leadership. Thanks to Santa, elves have become charming, whimsical creatures full of humor, craftsmanship, and good will toward men.

Let’s keep ‘em that way!

Who do you think has the more valid argument? Do you value fairness or Christmas?

Monday, December 24, 2012

Here are some of this year's Christmas creations! First, for my girlfriend Heather who shares a slightly macabre sense of humor.

For Heather's Mom and Dad, who took us Tannenbaum hunting.

Awaiting Heather this morning (we did our Christmas a day early) was a pennant and several alumni from Monsters University.

But my proudest creation, by far, was this delicious concoction.

A milk shake of equal parts vanilla bean ice cream, chocolate chip cookies, and ice; though the solution is named after it's two main ingredients: hot buttered rum and eggnog. Blend it all up and you've got yourself a tall, frosty glass of ButtNog!

Thursday, December 13, 2012

My girlfriend hosted an ornament making party last night. When I saw the black pipe cleaners, my thoughts went immediately to Halloweentown. Above is a very sassy Jack Skellington (maybe this is from when Jack decides to take over the Bravo network).

I followed Jack up with a spider ornament before turning to more traditional Christmas decor with my Skiing snowman.

Here are a few ornaments by the other massively creative party-goers:

"The Snowman Who Doesn't Ski, but Enjoys a Nice Drink at the Lodge" by Jackie, which my snowman was inspired by.

"The Inception" by Angela, featuring an ornament inside an ornament inside an ornament...